YMMV / Felix the Cat: The Movie

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• Accidental Innuendo: When Pim first shows up at Wack Lizardi's office with the bag, Wack asks "What in Zill have you got to be excited about? Did someone invent enlarging pills?" (It's meant to be a crack at Pim's height.)
• Adaptation Displacement: Many fans know Felix from this movie alone and aren't aware that this movie was based on the 1960's take of the character.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Oriana's second dance in the film is just her flailing her arms and spinning in a circle. Considering this was when Felix had hatched an escape plan, she may have been "dancing" like that to make sure no one really paid close attention to Felix.
• Anticlimax Boss: Felix defeats Zill's Master Cylinder in 14 seconds by throwing the Book of Ultimate Power at him.
• Anvilicious: The ending, as well as the book which is revealed to consist in its entirety of "Truth, Love and Wisdom". The Duke did not take it well.
• Ass Pull: The Duke of Zill abruptly revealing just near the end that he's built a new and improved Master Cylinder to fight the heroes.
• Awesome Music: Despite the movie's many flaws, pretty much everyone agrees the soundtrack is well worth a listen. While many of the songs in the film are either not played in full or are muffled by sound effects, Don Oriolo released a soundtrack for the film in early 2014 containing the full versions of many of the songs.
  • "Face to the Wind (The Princess Song)", a hauntingly beautiful instrumental that left its mark on many of the film's younger viewers.
  • "Who Is The Boss?", the extensively '80s-flavored Villain Song sung in praise of the Duke Of Zill.
  • "Mizzard Shuffle" is a cute and catchy theme as the Mizzards perform their routine.
  • "Something More Than Friends", which only plays for a few seconds in the film (tho the German version does have the entire song in the credits)
  • "Together Again", a heartwarming song that doesn't appear in the film but was included on the soundtrack.
  • Not included in the 2014 release was "All You Need Is Friends", an instrumental of which plays over the end credits.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Several, notably a dragon/lizard/thing that starts quoting A Streetcar Named Desire.
  • The "Sly as a Fox" musical number is definitely this. It comes out of nowhere, has no relevance on the rest of the plot (through playing over a brief gag sequence) and Felix does not bring it up afterwards.
• Bile Fascination: Many people are only interested in seeing this movie because of the vitriol it receives.
• Cult Classic: Sure, there's a lot of problems, but its impressive weirdness and genuinely awesome synth-rock soundtrack, plus heavy repeats of it on cable in the mid-90s, have earned it a cult following.
• Designated Evil: We're never told what the Duke of Zill originally did to be banished from the kingdom… his only "crime" that we're shown was creating the Cylinders, which he thought would revolutionize labor. He was jealous of the king, who he considered weak and backwards, but there's no indication that he was planning to take over the kingdom before he was banished. Oriana does state that he wanted the Book of Ultimate Power though, so he may have only been using the "labor robots" to plan a coup.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Wack Lizardi is pretty popular amongst the fandom. Some given reasons for this include that his voice actor is completely hamming it up thus making him at least slightly enjoyable to listen to, he tells Felix that he's "no good with jokes", something a fair amount of viewers agree with, and seems to actually do more things on-screen than the Duke of Zill does.
  • Grumper also appeals to many people who see him as the Only Sane Man.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: The Duke of Zill's ridiculous Mysterio-esque helmet.
• Glurge: Oriana's final words to Felix can elicit nothing but a tired, irritated groan from pretty much anyone who hears them. She brings up the fact that none of the gold the protagonists want to take home will pass through the trans-dimensional transporter, but Felix's "heart of gold" will go through. It's a vomitous quote to end on, considering the beating this film just gave the audience's brain, being so incomprehensible in story and execution.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Felix makes fun of a skull in the movie, only for Felix to rip his own off in a Sega Genesis bootleg featuring him years later.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Let's see, we have a Darker and Edgier revival of a classic cartoon icon involving him going into a twisted, evil world to fight an evil overlord and his army of robots, and has a magical tool at his disposal. Gee, why does that sound familiar?
  • The Dark Savant from the Wizardry games looks extremely similar to the Duke Of Zill (particuarly in Wizardry 8) and even has an army of robots serving him (that said, the Savant may be an intentional Expy of the Duke.)
• Memetic Molester: The Duke of Zill's gotten this treatment, mostly because of his rather... odd emotional investment in watching his niece dance.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Felix head in the opening, animated in a primordial (and incredibly uncanny) form of motion capture (in one of its earliest cinematic uses).
  • Oriana being chased by the Cylinders early in the film.
  • The trees which sprouted what were essentially black and pink flying jellyfish.
  • The Headhunters.
  • The circus, especially when Who is the Boss? is performed. Also, Wack Lizardi.
  • Grumper's violent facial expressions
  • The deranged animation.
• Padding: Quite a few scenes, but special mention goes to the tapdancing Mizzards scene.
• The Scrappy: Princess Oriana isn't exactly liked by some fans due to being fairly dismissive of the idea of Felix being the hero that was meant to save her, disbanding her army despite knowing that she had a crazy power-hungry uncle threatening her kingdom, not doing anything useful once she joins Felix, and saying she'll shut down the dimensporter for good despite barely using it at all and it actually helping them in one of the few (or possibly only) times it's been used.
• So Bad, It's Good: More like So Bad It's Hilarious. The film's plot makes very little sense, the audio is poorly done, the character designs invoke more nightmares than glee from children, and the characters are pretty irritating overall, but given how bizarre it is, some find enjoyment regardless.
• Special Effects Failure: The 3D head in the start of the film is extremely off-putting and out of nowhere. It also doesn't make any sense considering the fact that nothing else in the film is computer generated, so it appears to have been done to just see if they could do it. And frankly, the mouth barely moves and the unblinking stare is unnerving.
  • The film itself suffers from low quality in lots of spots, like a scene during the circus where the villain's shadow glitches out and stutters behind him unintentionally. Characters sometimes change colors randomly and the princess' advisor has mouth flaps that rarely ever match the voice.
• Squick:
  • Some reviewers have noted that the Duke of Zill seems to be too interested in seeing his niece dance night after night.
  • Princess Oriana kissing Felix on the head and him acting lovestruck afterwards is usually seen as pretty gross by most viewers.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: The film was a genuine labor of love for Don Oriolo, who made it solely to carry on his dad's legacy and bring the Felix the Cat series back into the limelight. Unfortunately, this didn't save the film from being a bizarre mess or tanking at the box office (though it eventually did find an audience years later).
• Viewer Gender Confusion: The Mizzards. It doesn't help that the animators keep mixing up which one is the pink one and which one is the blue one.

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